One less bowl of cereal a week for his boy, one less sandwich a week for himself. That's what Friday's cut to national food stamp allotments means to Lionel Hill, but the math equation for lost meals is bound to get worse in the coming months.

Hill, 57, and others who need the government aid to eat have no hope of getting their lost benefits back, considering the only debate in Congress over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - food stamps - is how much further to slash it. That makes the situation both personal and worrisome in his household.

"Food stamps mean a lot to me," said the retired elections worker, who lives in San Francisco with extended family and is attending community college to retool his job skills. "I'm raising my 7-year-old nephew, and with food stamps I can concentrate more on paying rent, gas, bus fare, utilities.

"Without them, something has to give. And it won't be good."

Hill already buys mainly the cheapest generic brands. He picks up weekly groceries at his local food bank, where he also volunteers.

4 to 6 fewer meals

Friday's cuts mean he will receive $20 less each month in food stamps than the $200 he's been getting for the past two years. That translates to four to six lost meals a month.

"I understand these cuts have to do with politics, but here on the local level, in my house, it hurts," Hill said. "Every dollar counts."

Friday's reduction in the nation's food stamp disbursement came with the expiration of extra funding provided by the federal stimulus act of 2009. More than 47 million low-income Americans receive food stamps, and nearly half of those are children.

The reduction generally translates to $36 less a month for a family of four and $11 less for an individual.

In California, the food stamp program is called CalFresh, and it serves 4.1 million people - 250,000 of whom are in the Bay Area. An announcement of Friday's cuts on the CalFresh website urged recipients to call their local food banks to try to make up the shortage.

They're unlikely to find much help there. Food bank managers say they are already swamped and can't fill any new gaps.

"There's no magic we can do," said Paul Ash, executive director of the San Francisco and Marin Food Banks. "At food banks, we're all high-output, tight-performance operations as it is. As the line gets longer, you try to prioritize to the degree you can, but there's really not much you can do. It's not pretty."

Ash's food bank serves 225,000 people a year. Across the bay, the Alameda County Community Food Bank helps 260,000 people a year, and its managers are no more hopeful than Ash.

"These cuts to (the food stamp program) couldn't come at a worse time," said Michael Altfest, spokesman for the East Bay nonprofit. "The holiday time is just beginning, and that's already a busy time when we're stretched.

"Having less in food stamps means a lot of people are not going to be able to enjoy the holidays like they wish they could," Altfest said.

The prospect of restoring the stimulus funding that vanished Friday is virtually nil in Congress.

Driven by the recession, the food stamp budget in the United States has doubled since 2007 to about $80 billion a year, and conservatives say there is enough economic progress now to consider that amount bloated.

In the debate over funding the national farm bill - which determines the supplemental nutrition budget - the Republican-dominated House of Representatives recently passed legislation to cut $40 billion from food stamps over the next 10 years. The Senate's version would cut $4.1 billion. No serious effort has been mounted to increase funding as the two chambers try to reconcile their dueling proposals.

GOP talking point

Fueling the fervor to slash has been the potent imagery of Jason Greenslate, a 29-year-old San Diego-area surfer shown in a Fox News report cashing in his food stamps for sushi and lobster. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R- Kan., declared he was "against fraud and freeloaders" as he cast his vote for reductions, and added that "you can no longer sit on your couch or ride a surfboard and expect the federal taxpayer to feed you."

Democrats retorted that the Greenslate story was an overblown update of 1980s tales of welfare queens. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, trotted out examples of taxpayer-funded meals of steak and caviar bought on overseas research trips by Republicans.

Trent Rhorer, executive director of the San Francisco Human Services Agency, maintained that CalFresh cuts have a ripple effect that hurts the local economy, saying every dollar spent in food stamps translates into $1.84 for merchants and distributors. More than 35,000 people a month use $8 million in food stamps in San Francisco, so the potential effect in the city alone is hefty.

"The cuts Friday are going to cause families some level of hardship, but the big concern for me is what the House is proposing," Rhorer said. "It's huge. If that passes, we're talking gross hardship."